What is the DWmegawad Club?
This is a place where we settle down, have a cup of tea (or drink of your choice) and take a month to play through a megawad on our own, together! Any keen observations, criticisms, or frustrated ranting about it goes here in the discussion. As long as you want to say something about what you've played, feel free to speak your mind.

Can I join?
Sure. The only rule is that you have to play at least some of the levels in our monthly megawad to contribute, but you're generally encouraged to finish the whole thing, even if you've played it before.

What levels am I allowed to post about?
Whatever day of the month it is, is the upper limit for the map you can post on. So if it's the 6th, you may discuss up to MAP06.

Do I have to post an entry every day?
Nope, not at all. This is only for our more enthusiastic members. As long as you play through it with us you’re part of the club.

Hadephobia is a Boom-compatible community megawad project first dreamt up by Katamori and later realized by Purist in November of 2010. Its unique features are that it has a consistent theme & story behind it, as well as being designed to be played continuously (as opposed to pistol start); mappers had approximately one week to create a level based off the ending of the prior map. Included in the .zip file is a story.txt to add some contextual flavor for each outing, which I will post here every day in the thread for those that can't be bothered to open up notepad. It was finally released this February after much tweaking and playtesting. Like Interception, note that there may still be some errors or bugs, so if you spot any feel free to mention them.

Here is the backstory:

It's some years after Hell On Earth. You prevented the demonic invasion and the threat has subsided. The UAC has been greatly discredited as a result of the catastrophes on Phobos, Deimos and Earth. After completing a contract to eradicate the sporadic remaining factions of Hell their military funds are removed and thier remit restricted to researching advancement in treating those suffering combat fatigue from the invasion. Those who had survived close encounters with Spider Masterminds had particulary acute symptoms of hysteria. After alerting your Commanding Officer to your horrifying premonitions of a new attack from Hell you are referred to the UAC who diagnose you with the new condition: Hadephobia.

Below is the maplist (don't look if you're sensitive to potential spoilers).

01 - ESCAPE FROM THE ASYLUMThe nightmares have begun again. The same night terrors you had during the Phobos and Deimos invasions. The same dreams that returned with the forces of Hell on the attack on Earth. Claws scratching out guts, jaws chewing through bone, fireballs burning off flesh. You are more certain than anything. Hell is back.

You urgently inform your Commanding Officer but it proves a waste of your breath. The UAC are bent on distancing themselves with the former attrocities and ignore your warnings. Strong arm attempts at persuasion leave you institutionalized in the military sick bay.

Time passes. Days or weeks you are not sure. Time melds together as does reality in a drug induced blur. Then one morning you wake from your med addled slumber. Everything is silent and your senses feel clear. You crawl through a busted vent and out of your cell alerting creatures in the hospital corridor.

You want to think you are in another nightmare but your insticts are sharp enough to tell you this is for real. You blast your way through the asylum, searching for security clearance before finally hitting the elevator switch. Your first thought is to find your C.O. and thrust the severed head of a demon in his face as the proof he needs, but then consider the possibility he is already dead, along with many others. The chamber moves in the shaft and you tighten your grip on your weapon in anticipation of the elevator doors opening...

MAP01: Katamory provides an excellent, gloomy, haunted starter map that, while generous with health and ammo, fills the player with an unnerving sense of dread. The rooms and halls of sick bay are grayscale and compact, with most of the lighting doing the eye-catching work here. Really like the detail of additional hallways blocked off and cell doors closed shut. The teleporter trap at the end doesn't exactly do much for the player, but so far this really vibes well with me.

Shame you're not playing this time Kristian, I do like your comments. I know these levels very well so I will comment more from an inside development point of view.

MAP01 - Escape From the Asylum by Katamori

The progressive fiction idea was kind of jointly conceived by Katamori and I. Katamori came up with the idea of having the maps segue thematically whereas the story text idea was mine. It was apt then, that Katamori started us off and it's a pretty solid founding for the megawad.

...Asylum is a very short, simple affair in fitting with Katamori's fixation with 1024 mapping at the time. This is to be expected in a MAP01 and to be fair to the author, he had only a few days to make it as his original submission turned out to be a non-starter. Since the backstory was written retrospectively the most important element on this slot was always going to be that there was a decent accompanying story to work with and this was certainly achieved.

I like the atmosphere this map creates and the literal in-game representation of the story. I would have liked a bit more space and level flow (it's really just a corridor with a few small annexes) and more secrets would have been nice (there was none in the original draft so I added the one that can be found here) but it's a good start taking everything into account.

The one thing I find funny about this wad is that the story is placed in the textfile, surely it could have been put into the intermission screen? I mean Perditions Gate and Hell To Pay managed this on the Vanilla engine 18 years ago. I'm just asking really rather than complaining btw :P

cannonball said:
The one thing I find funny about this wad is that the story is placed in the textfile, surely it could have been put into the intermission screen? I mean Perditions Gate and Hell To Pay managed this on the Vanilla engine 18 years ago. I'm just asking really rather than complaining btw :P

I think someone mentioned this in passing during development but I didn't really understand what it meant as I've never played either of those. I didn't think anything further of it until st.alfonzo mentioned it in Jimmy's Tango TV interview but by then it was too late.

I'm still not sure how it works, which graphic is replaced specifically?

Map01
A good atmospheric map that actually fits the storyline. I liked how it resembles an asylum. Of course, it's very light combat-wise, but that's okay for a first map.

My complaints:
1. The medikits can be easily grabbed without lowering the crates, which kind of renders the secret useless.
2. I think a custom music track would be better for map01. I don't have anything against Suspense per se, but I've heard the original Doom music so many times and this is map01 in the end.

Love the idea for this DWmegawad club and wanted to join in on last months, but I was playing through DTWID at the time and didn't really feel to play two doom 1 megawads back-to-back.

Map01:
Nice starter map. I agree with what's been said by most folks. Nice atmosphere. Overall, I like how they turned vanilla textures into looking this good. It's mostly vanilla textures, right? Anyway, not much to say. Usually, I'm not crazy about Doom-maps trying to emulate or create a realisic enviroment and this is really no difference. Could have gond without the toilets.

Map02:
Feels like a natural continuation of Map01, which I know was part of the goal of the Wad. Dark corners and lots of zombies. Feels very turn-of-the-millenia shooter in it's style. A bit like Half-Life or Sin. Just an observation.

02 - STORAGE BASEMENT...In the middle of your way down you hear some strange noises above your head. You get frightened as you're expecting some nasty hellspawn getting in the elevator in order to kill you. Suddenly, the elevator jolts to a stop between the seventh and eighth floor and, hearing a scratching noise from the elevator shaft, you must face the awful truth: They're not going to toast you. It's much worse. Just a moment later, you are lifted from your feet and your head knocks the ceiling of the elevator. Gravity pulls down this huge metal monstrum - and you're trapped in it!

But wait... do you have to panic? You're a brave space marine - top of the class in survival training. It is doubtless that you're supposed to survive! An echoing bang breaks the gloomy silence in the hospital's cellar as the elevator lands on the bottom of the shaft. You were braced for broken bones but find you have nothing apart from some minor bruising. The elevator is more busted up than you are, the door is jammed closed but you find a way out through another air vent exposed from the crash and soon you end up in storage. You re-evaluate your situation and risk-assess the sewer as the safest route due to being the sector least prone to infestation but access is locked. You must find the way to the control room, which sets your way free into the sewers. As you are on your way through the dark, you have to face another unpleasant surprise. The arrival of the elevator alerted those horrendous hellspawn down here. Your way through this darkness won't be easy. You hold on to your gun and prepare for the worst thing ever to happen to you. After some uncertain roamings back and forth, killing everything that moves in your way, you finally find the switch which opens the pathway to the sewers. You go downstairs, get into the tunnel and venture blindly ahead into the endless darkness...

MAP02: Continuing the darkened facility theme, Cell picks up at the bottom of the elevator shaft and introduces us to a map containing a few pesky chaingunners. Detail here is spot on again, with various boxes and mechanical wiring strewn across the basement. Traps are a little more “in your face” this time with baddies popping down right on top of you, but health and ammo continue to be extremely generous, ensuring that the player can always work their way back to a full arsenal. The pinky harmlessly patrolling the top of some stairs was silly. Another enjoyable effort.

Welcome Evil Ned! To answer your question, yes you're correct. Hadephobia is almost exclusively stock Doom 2 textures with just 2 custom textures based off existing Doom 2 textures that were created to fix visual errors.

MAP02 - Storage Basement by Cell

I remember getting a good feeling about this project when Cell's first submission was uploaded days ahead of schedule and looking close to the version you'll be playing today.

I loved the transition from the previous map and the gloomy atmosphere. The action is fairly standard but without any bones of contention and the detail and lighting is well done.

Story-wise not a lot is added but two maps in there should not really be any twists or turns anyway.

The only things I'm not keen on is that the secrets areas could have been expanded (they are all just small closets) and they overpower the player too much. There are probably too many shells as well, I always finish with a hefty surplus.

Does this wad not support pistol starts? That's disappointing, I think, if true.

Map01
Short, dark tech base. Comes as close to 'action packed' as it is going to get in the first fight, and then rather unnecessarily requires two keys to get to the exit. One would have been enough.

Looks fine, even managing to do pseudo-furniture without it looking too goofy.

Map02
For some reason, it took me ages to spot the key that lowered the yellow key. But that's not the designer's fault.

What is their fault is that like the last level, this map has one too many keys for its size and complexity. That's a pretty minor issue, though. The gameplay is otherwise good. Easy, of course, but with resistance getting stronger as the level goes on.

Visual design is again good; I especially liked the 'cables'.

Both maps so far seem like they would be a bit of a chore in co-op, with all the chokepoints and lack of larger rooms or alternate routes of advance.

MAP02 - Storage Basement by Cell
Follows on nicely from the previous map, dark and spooky but with more monsters. Chaingun and ssg (secret) are given along with the berserk pack which allows for some fun. I almost died on a pinky who decided the laws of physics didn't apply to him, only so many times I can punch through your face :/
Anyway nice map with good classic music choice. Again this map is over very quickly but it's nice while it lasts.

I’m loving this megawad right off the bat. Cheers for choosing “Suspense” as the music. My favorite tune from Doom, nice and creepy. I never get tired of playing to this track.

Katamori does an excellent job of conveying the sense of a mental institution. The doors with barred cutouts are a prime touch. The lighting is superb and creates a sense of menace. The rooms and passageways are small and claustrophobic. The map design overall is very simple, but the lighting is so good that it works in creating a tense atmosphere. Really outstanding design.

The first big fight was the best, and caught me a bit by surprise, taking me down to 25%. No real problem bouncing back from that. But even though the fights are easy, the sense that something awful might happen was so strong that I always felt unnerved. What more could I ask for from an opening map?

Worth noting is the outstanding music that plays between maps, and the cool title pics. Evidence all around of a terrific project.

Map02 maintains the high standard of Map01, and picks up where Map01 left off, though now the exit/entrance is busted-up for some reason. Looks cool. Again you have to creep through an access tunnel, but this time you’ll face stronger opposition at the other end. In the fullness of time, you’ll also discover that even in 2012, mappers are still putting Medikits, Stimpacks, boxes of shells and so on, in front of switches! Please, stop that! Stop it right now! And don't put that kind of stuff in narrow hallways, either.

That gripe aside, this is a fun map oozing with atmosphere. The SSG is the first secret I found, which came in handy against the Pinkies and Spectres, given that the Berserk was hidden in an odd place, and I never bothered to pick it up until after I finished the map and went humping for the two secrets I missed the first time. I discovered that the Berserk is not a secret.

I liked the traps in this map, the teleporting chaingunners at the red key platform and the Insta-Lift menagerie on the (cough!) stairs (cough!) near the exit. I think it was a mistake to make the Insta-Lift monsters deaf, because at first they wandered around like drunks with no idea what to do. By the time they got the idea to attack me, they were dead. Only a few steps from here we open a door, kill Chaingun Charlie and his pink buddy, and find a box of shells in front of a switch. I had 48 shells when I saw that. Ahem! Luckily, I was able to back up and grab a shotgun from a dead Sergeant.

I finished in 10:35 on the first try – obviously I’m not a speedster – but only had 33% secrets, so I went back and found the Backpack and, miraculously, the Soulsphere. It was just a crazy urge that made made me try that (cough!) panel (cough!). Sheer luck! I also liked the music track in this level. Aside from the nitpicks I mentioned, this map is excellent.

Clever name for a sewer map, and overall, not too bad, though I thought the fights were a bit too easy, and parts of the map looked bland, for example the room with the blue key switch. I was stunned when the first secret I found was the computer map, and I do object to that, but not too much. Sometimes it’ s nice to have things go a little easy.

The sewer areas were nicely done and convincing. The only big fight, with the teleporting monsters, isn’t really a fight at all, since circling around them causes the Hell Knight to do most of the work for you. I suppose this was seen as an easy way to introduce the HK, but maybe a little too easy. Luckily, there are enough hitscanners to chip away at your health. I lost my whole Soulsphere bonus, first at the trap in the blue key area, and second when chaingunners appear at the Midbars corridor.

A cool feature of the map was the lighting in the blue key area, which showed on the floor but not the ceiling. Cool trick. How do you do that? I figure it must be dummy sectors but I’m not sure how it was pulled off.

There’s not much else to say. It’s a nice map and continues the story of your escape. It looks pretty good, and has a nice music track, but the fights are a bit too easy.

Yeah, really small level. The start can be a little tough due to the small corridors and lost souls/shotgunners, but there’s plenty of health to help heal you up after a bit. Using the closed-off corridors helps make the level seem bigger, and I liked the touch of using the UAC texture for the “A” and “C” section arrows. Still, this is REALLY short, as after the first main battle there's only a few enemies, and running back and down the hallway due to keys seems a bit much. I think the furniture could use from some resizing too - or maybe asylum toilets come up to your neck? I dunno. Still, really good atmosphere.

MAP 02 – STORAGE BASEMENT

Another tight level, and I like that we’re getting some slow, small, darkly-lit levels before what will likely be combat fests. Really feels like a continuation of the first. And unlike the first map, actually get to explore a bit. Didn’t like the “enemies appear out of nowhere” right after the red door, though. I also walked by the yellow key about 10 times without seeing it... it's obvious if you look back through that little window, but I don't usually spend time looking through 16-pixel wide windows. :) And ammo is overly plentiful, I was making sure to avoid ammo boxes since it seemed like I was always near max. Only was able to find the soulsphere secret, I am a failure.

MAP03 – THE STENCH OF FREEDOM

The monster amount stays the same, but the corridors open up a lot, keeping this level easy (even despite the large horde that teleports in at one point). A couple of easy secrets, including a comp map that makes the last secret findable (a wall texture only misaligned slightly). Decent little sewer level.

IIRC this was Melon's first ever single player map, having only previously mapped for deathmatch. However, I think the single player gameplay does not suffer. In fact, having a sewer map put into the hands of a multiplayer oriented designer worked well as the claustrophobic nukage maze commonly associated with this sort of level does not transpire. Instead the damaging floors are tastefully placed, level flow aids the player and there's plenty of space to manoeuvre in.

This extra space removes some of the challenge and I find it the easiest of the maps so far as a result. It would have made sense to warp in extra monsters since this is a factor in the story and the teleport ambush was beefed up a couple of times to illustrate this - but perhaps it could have been taken further still.

It's also worth noting that this level features the first of PRIMEVAL's OST contributions Stalking Shadows, which I think compliments the map well.

03 - THE STENCH OF FREEDOM...You begin to wonder if heading into the sewers was a smart idea. The smell is awful and is making you nauseous. A cold breeze blows into your face and brings the smell with it, making you gag.

Wait a minute... a cold breeze? A way out of here may be closer than you thought. You quicken your pace, demons are teleporting directly into the sewer now, and you don't want to be around when the welcoming party brings all of it's friends. You turn the corner inside a snaking tunnel and catch a glimpse of sunlight. A large pipe is belching sewer water into the local river but there's a big metal gate blocking it. You hunt around and find two switches unlocking the barrier and finally make your way outside to the edge of the pipe.

The river outside is flowing fast down a steep rocky mountain side. You hesitate, but quickly make up your mind to jump as demons start teleporting in behind you...

MAP03: The cramped spaces subside as a larger murky sewer becomes the central point for this map. Melon isn’t as keen on detail as Cell or Katamori, but still manages to provide a map with two unique features: the eye-catching, vibrant exit tunnel and the rocky ground texture smartly being used as piles of feces. The battles in the sewer are toned up from the previous two maps, with damaging sewage forcing the player to move more and the darkened imp-in-a-cage ambushes being among the smartest use of the enemy so far. Not too shabby of a map.

My main problem with the fiction so far (besides its purple prose) is that it's not clear when we're supposed to read it. The entry for each level tends to describe the entire level, so it's a bit spoilery to read it beforehand, but also a bit pointless to read after (since you just played the whole level, even if it does describe what you saw).

You'll certainly be missed, Kristian. Hope to see you back next month.

Alright, Hadephobia. This will be the first WAD the Club has played that I have no prior experience at all with (all of the Club's past WADs I had played before, either in their entirety or just in part), so I'm a clean slate, here, with no idea what sort of style of play/design I'm in for. I do see some names whose other work I'm acquainted with in the Credits file, but also others I'm unfamiliar with, including Cell, Death Egg, Melon, and others.

I see that the text file encourages continuous play, which is what most participants seem to be opting for this time. However, as I've seen both Melon and Purist assert that the maps are all beatable from pistol starts, that's what I'll be sticking with. Of course, "beatable" does not necessarily mean "easily beatable" or "maxable", I suppose...I guess I'll let you know. As usual, port is Eternity, using chivalrous mouselook and with infinitely-tall things nixed. Difficulty is Ultraviolence. Without further ado....

Map 01 -- Escape from The Asylum - 100% kills / 100% secrets
Quite an atmospheric startmap, very obviously inspired by the 1024 craze of a short few years ago, as others have observed (though whether it actually fits within a 1024x1024 space, I can't say). Verisimilitude is quite high, with distinct real-world purposes for each room involved--cells, restrooms, storage area, observation stations, etc. It's quite drearily textured in a lot of sterile silver and gray, and in concert with the generally dim and shadowy nature of the lighting, I think it looks very believable, by Doom standards. As an extra personal rule/challenge, I resolved not to use anything but the fist until I'd killed a zombieman or sergeant (why would the facility staff let the protagonist keep a handgun in his room?), but this promptly went out the window when the first thing I did was punch a wandering zombie to death through the bars on the cell door (I imagined the marine reaching out and snapping his neck while grabbing a pistol from his holster). All the action is over in an eyeblink, but I feel what's there is sufficient--my favorite part was holding off the last teleporting assault with the shotgun from inside that tiny guard cubicle. Believe it or not, despite the presence of hitscanners, I took no damage at all in this map, and so spent some time after I'd killed everything wandering stupidly about looking for the secret, until it dawned on me it was probably the medikit platform (which I didn't need, and so hadn't approached).

Map 02 -- Storage Basement - 100% kills / 100% secrets
My first ever Cellmap, and I'm generally pleased. Again, verisimilitude is quite high, and I see that Cell is an adherent to the school of sector-based detailing, as evinced chiefly by the lovingly-rendered wrecked elevator in which the map begins, but also by the little cable and dynamos in/around the power room, the proliferation of tiny crates scattered about here and there, etc. The lighting in this map was excellent, working well with the well-chosen TNT music track to help stage a threatening mood; I know that some players feel that a lot of darkness is in bad taste or lends to aesthetic blandness, but for my part I generally welcome it, and I hope that the rest of the WAD's authors continue to show no hesitation in using it. The action here is pretty similar to what was seen in map 01, largely by dint of how small or cramped most of the map's spaces are, although I think it was actually more tame overall, largely by dint of the three secrets, two of which are quite powerful. If I do have a complaint, it'd be about the insta-appearing zombie squad on the stairs down into the first part of the sewers...I don't have a problem with this trick per se, but it being used on this set of curving stairs makes absolutely no sense from either a narrative or gameplay perspective (since only the guy that appears right next to you is any kind of threat, as the rest will all tend to shoot each other or his back), I'd just as soon have had a cluster of deaf zombies/imps waiting natively at the bottom, myself. Nevertheless, still an enjoyable little quickie, this one.

Map03
A solid sewer-themed map. Much lower on detail than the last two maps, but it also had the first genuine "bring a smile to my face" moment with the big spawn-in at the large chamber. Good mix of monsters there for infighting and run and gun. Liked it.

After that, however, the inspiration appears to fade; the imps in cages in particular seemed like pointless busy work. I think only one of them actually managed to launch a fireball. Certainly none of them hit me. It made for a very tepid conclusion to the map.

MAP03 - The Stench of Freedom by Melon
The looks of this map can look a bit bland in places (though the exit looks nice). The gameplay is pretty decent with a nice teleport trap after the blue bars. The dark caged area felt a bit out of place and seemed to be there for combat sake even though it was a little dull.
An ok map with good and bad parts. The music is nice though.

I've decided to scrap reading the fiction parts. So far, they're not really doing anything but just describing what happens in the levels, which I already know reading them after I play the levels.

Anyway,

Map03:
Usually not too fond of sewers being depicted as sewers. I still have nightmares of the sewers in Strife, anyone remember those? This map is fairly short and not that dangerous. It's an OK outing, but nothing I'd write home about.

Map04:
First outdoor map! I liked it. I noticed that after raising the water levels, there were a handfull of chaingun towers that were out of reach for my auto-aim, which annoyed me a little bit. But just a little.
Difficulty is still fairly easy, but it's only level 4 so hey!

EvilNed said:
I've decided to scrap reading the fiction parts. So far, they're not really doing anything but just describing what happens in the levels, which I already know reading them after I play the levels.

Yeah, for a story based megawad this one has a really uninteresing story IMO. "You took a teleporter and appeared somewhere, you entered some base, found a train, took a ride somewhere else, killed some monsters, blah blah". Long long descriptions full of unnecessary information.

My map! I half wanted this to be the ship but decided to make the map I did and instead try to lead the player on to the ship for a later map.

My inspiration for the outdoor ravine area was E3M2 but it does not resemble it in the end product. The other main idea was to have a level fill up with water allowing you to progress, which was something I had been waiting for an opportunity to implement.

My original plan was to include the dock in this level but at this point we were strictly keeping to the week-long deadline and there was no time. I'm glad now as I really like the way the map has turned out and I might have tarnished it if I carried on!

The only thing I am not entirely pleased with is the dam itself. It just looks like any other wall and I should have made more of an effort to identify it as a dam.

04 - WASHED UP...The moment you crash into the river you realise you underestimated it's current. As if to confirm so you are pulled violent into jagged rock - knocking the wind out your lungs. You try to struggle against the white rapids but soon you're thrashed again. Your fight gives out and you slip into unconciousness...

...You wake beached on a rocky terrain. By chance just your lower half is submerged in a calm spring that leads off from the river. At the opposite bank of the river you see the asshole end of the hospital you were shit from and bobbing in the stream are the bodies of less fortunate jetsam. One of them gurgles as if to speak and you realise he's still alive! He says you are on a largely uninhabited island where survival is impossible but there may be a small chance of escape by smuggling yourself onto a frieght ship that docks here. His words then become unintelligible and he finally gives out to death.

You wonder how long you were uncouncious for. You guess about an hour as it has darkened but it is not yet night. You decide to try to make good time searching for the dock before the nightfall but your progress is hampered by the teleporting hordes of Hell and an untraversable landscape. You eventually find a passage dug out of a cavern. An officer had holed himself in there until a particulary large beast forced it's way through. You take his security pass to access the dam station. In there you lower the dam to flood out the ravine - allowing you to reach higher ground and the entrance to the dock.

The entrance is guarded by large floating demons and more teleporting zombies. After you dispatch the last of them you throw the entrance switch and hope you're able to hold off whatever awaits you until the ship arrives...

MAP04: Finally out of the dank complex, the player now traverses across a larger, more rugged terrain. This was another enjoyable map with a bunch of little neat moments sprinkled throghout. Giving the chainsaw to the player and then throwing in chaingunners between warping pinkies was a brilliant idea, as it left me quite vulnerable as I tried to conserve ammo. I actually snuck past the pink bruiser in the underground passage and wound up finding the SSG, a welcome reward for my stealthy strafing. After opening the floodgates I didn’t actually expect the scenery to change so much and felt like I was in a new area—props to purist for that crafty change. Overall it was a great level.